O'SULLIVAN

Denis O'Sullivan, better known around Skibbereen as 'Singing Sullivan'. He was born in San Francisco in 1868; his father, Cornelius O'Sullivan, emigrated to the United States in 1845, on the eve of the Famine. Cornelius has an operatic life story of his own. When he arrived in the US he worked in a cotton broker's office, in New Orleans, but was soon seduced by the siren song of the California gold rush. He set off for Panama, crossed the isthmus and arrived in San Francisco in the autumn of 1849. Like his father before him, Denis O'Sullivan was very generous to Skibbereen. At the height of his career, when he was filling many of the most famous Grand Old Opera houses and theatres in Britain and America, he still found time to make his way to Skibbereen. For five consecutive years, the famous baritone and actor made his way 'home' and gave recitals at the town hall, with the entire proceeds going to the local branch of the St Vincent de Paul society. He was regarded as the foremost authority on Irish music in the world. He was a Feis Ceoil adjudicator, vocalist, delegate and speaker to the Pan-Celtic Congress in Dublin, and was a delegate to the Irish national convention in 1907.